WEBVTT 00:00.472 --> 00:10.583 [SPEAKER_00]: A reading from the prophet Isaiah, seek the Lord while he is still to be found, cold to him while he is still near, let the wicked man abandon his way, the evil man his thoughts. 00:11.384 --> 00:16.450 [SPEAKER_00]: Let him turn back to the Lord who will take pity on him, to our God who is rich and forgiving. 00:17.170 --> 00:18.892 [SPEAKER_00]: For my thoughts are not your thoughts. 00:19.472 --> 00:20.874 [SPEAKER_00]: My ways are not your ways. 00:21.614 --> 00:22.735 [SPEAKER_00]: It is the Lord who speaks. 00:23.256 --> 00:27.299 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the heavens are as high above earth as my ways are above your ways. 00:27.819 --> 00:29.080 [SPEAKER_00]: My thoughts above your thoughts. 00:29.601 --> 00:30.462 [SPEAKER_00]: The word of the Lord. 00:31.122 --> 00:31.983 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks be to God. 00:33.433 --> 00:39.555 [SPEAKER_00]: The responsibility of Psalm is the Lord is near to all who call Him, the Lord is near to all who call Him. 00:40.935 --> 00:51.499 [SPEAKER_00]: I will bless you day after day, I will praise your name forever, the Lord is great, highly to be praised, His greatness cannot be measured, the Lord is near to all who call Him. 00:52.659 --> 00:57.160 [SPEAKER_00]: The Lord is kind and full of compassion, slow to anger, abounding in love. 00:58.300 --> 01:02.221 [SPEAKER_00]: How good is the Lord to all, compassion it, to all His creatures? 01:03.061 --> 01:04.982 [SPEAKER_00]: The Lord is near to all who call Him. 01:06.282 --> 01:09.963 [SPEAKER_00]: The Lord is just in all His ways, and loving in all His deeds. 01:10.743 --> 01:14.384 [SPEAKER_00]: He is close to all who call Him, who call on Him from their hearts. 01:15.144 --> 01:16.844 [SPEAKER_00]: The Lord is near to all who call Him. 01:22.424 --> 01:26.506 [SPEAKER_00]: Crash will be glorified in my body, whether by my life or by my death. 01:27.427 --> 01:32.130 [SPEAKER_00]: Life to me, of course, is Christ, but then death would bring me something more. 01:32.890 --> 01:38.693 [SPEAKER_00]: But then again, if living in this body means doing work which is having good results, I do not know what I should choose. 01:39.334 --> 01:40.654 [SPEAKER_00]: I am caught in this dilemma. 01:41.255 --> 01:44.957 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to be gone and be with Christ, which would be very much the better. 01:45.637 --> 01:48.839 [SPEAKER_00]: But for me to stay alive in this body is a more urgent need for your sake. 01:49.520 --> 01:55.206 [SPEAKER_00]: Avoid anything in your everyday lives that would be unworthy of the Gospel of Christ, the Word of the Lord. 01:55.807 --> 01:58.110 [SPEAKER_01]: A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. 02:00.022 --> 02:06.364 [SPEAKER_01]: Jesus said to his disciples, the kingdom of heaven is like a lander of going out of daybreak to higher workers for his vineyard. 02:07.505 --> 02:11.927 [SPEAKER_01]: He made an agreement with the workers for one denarius a day and sent them to his vineyard. 02:13.027 --> 02:22.051 [SPEAKER_01]: Going out at about the third hour he saw other standing idle in the marketplace and said to them, you go to my vineyard too and I will give you a fair wage, so they went. 02:23.251 --> 02:27.733 [SPEAKER_01]: at about the sixth hour, and again at about the ninth hour, he went out and did the same. 02:28.694 --> 02:35.597 [SPEAKER_01]: Then at about the 11th hour, he went out and found more men standing round, and he said to them, why have you been standing here idle all day? 02:36.637 --> 02:38.338 [SPEAKER_01]: Because no one has hired us, they answered. 02:39.219 --> 02:41.880 [SPEAKER_01]: He said to them, you go into my vineyard too. 02:43.309 --> 02:51.378 [SPEAKER_01]: In the evening the owner of the vineyard said to his bailiff, call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last of the arrivals and ending with the first. 02:52.359 --> 02:56.963 [SPEAKER_01]: So those who were hired at about the 11th hour came forward and received one denarius each. 02:57.945 --> 03:02.910 [SPEAKER_01]: When the first came, they expected to get more, but they too received one denarius each. 03:03.871 --> 03:05.793 [SPEAKER_01]: They took it, but grumbled at the landowner, 03:06.587 --> 03:14.879 [SPEAKER_01]: The men who came lost, they said, have done only one hour and you have treated them the same as us, though we have done a heavy day's work in all the heat. 03:15.820 --> 03:18.364 [SPEAKER_01]: He answered one of them and said, my friend. 03:19.745 --> 03:23.088 [SPEAKER_01]: I am not being unjust to you, did we not agree on one denarius? 03:23.988 --> 03:25.349 [SPEAKER_01]: Take your earnings and go. 03:26.110 --> 03:28.592 [SPEAKER_01]: I choose to pay the last coming as much as I pay you. 03:28.892 --> 03:30.993 [SPEAKER_01]: Have I no right to do what I like with my own? 03:31.694 --> 03:33.575 [SPEAKER_01]: Why be invious because I am generous? 03:34.576 --> 03:37.758 [SPEAKER_01]: Fast the last will be first and the first last. 03:39.079 --> 03:39.940 [SPEAKER_01]: The gospel of the Lord. 03:41.707 --> 03:48.489 [SPEAKER_01]: Today our readings take us through three reflections on our relationship with God in the light of justice and mercy. 03:49.530 --> 03:53.051 [SPEAKER_01]: The first reading looks at our responsibility to respond in the relationship. 03:53.891 --> 04:02.074 [SPEAKER_01]: The second reading reflects on how judgment of ourselves should be left to God, and the gospel reflects on how we cannot earn God's mercy. 04:03.214 --> 04:11.257 [SPEAKER_01]: In our first reading we read in Isaiah, seek the Lord while he is still to be found, call to him while he is still near. 04:12.198 --> 04:24.262 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is not about God possibly going away, but us, you know, if you allow ourselves to drift too far from a relationship with him, we might not ever find our way back. 04:25.322 --> 04:34.006 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, you've met people and they say, I want to come back to God, but I don't know where you start, I don't even know how to pray, I don't know, how do I start, what do I say to him? 04:35.547 --> 04:45.451 [SPEAKER_01]: And the second aspect is that we should not delay our response to God or his invitation to relationship because although he will always be there, we will not. 04:46.271 --> 04:51.393 [SPEAKER_01]: We have a limited number of days on earth and we need to respond before it is too late. 04:53.395 --> 04:57.617 [SPEAKER_01]: We've discussed before that we ought to judge actions but not people. 04:58.457 --> 05:02.779 [SPEAKER_01]: But how about when we turn that brutal light of judgment on ourselves? 05:03.619 --> 05:08.661 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, in the second reading we see Paul writing here from prisonweeds, possibly about to die. 05:09.482 --> 05:14.424 [SPEAKER_01]: And his main concern is that Christ will be magnified in his body, whether through his life or death. 05:15.244 --> 05:20.707 [SPEAKER_01]: And Paul is confronting both the gravity and the uncertainty of what might happen at his trial. 05:22.327 --> 05:29.569 [SPEAKER_01]: that he's facing death and he also knows that what matters ultimately is Christ. 05:30.729 --> 05:37.411 [SPEAKER_01]: Through baptism Paul has died to his former life and he lives life now entirely taken over by Christ. 05:38.151 --> 05:41.052 [SPEAKER_01]: One that transcends the barrier of physical death. 05:42.052 --> 05:54.785 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, he speaks about death as gain, not in the sense of Greek philosophy which would see the release of the soul from being trapped in the physical body, but as an intensive, as intensifying the union with Christ. 05:55.766 --> 06:02.272 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is why it is a baptism and not death that we are born to eternal life. 06:03.353 --> 06:11.941 [SPEAKER_01]: Paul sees his duty to love for the sake of the church, but he does not try to stay alive, nor does he try to die as a glorious sort of martyr. 06:13.043 --> 06:26.936 [SPEAKER_01]: Here in Paul, we see a man so in love with Christ, that as he faces this life and death situation, he can't honestly decide which alternative he prefers. 06:28.668 --> 06:34.970 [SPEAKER_01]: you know, either life, with God building his church or full union with him in death. 06:38.050 --> 06:47.393 [SPEAKER_01]: As some of you who are listening may know, my dad recently walked in the valley of the shadow of death and thankfully God speed him and 06:49.238 --> 06:54.623 [SPEAKER_01]: he's back at church and kind of getting back into the swing of things. 06:54.843 --> 06:57.105 [SPEAKER_01]: He's still recovering and will be a war. 06:57.806 --> 07:00.388 [SPEAKER_01]: But the experience obviously deeply affected him. 07:01.188 --> 07:07.234 [SPEAKER_01]: And like any sincere person of faith, when faced with the fact that we might be facing God sooner rather than later, 07:08.054 --> 07:16.025 [SPEAKER_01]: We become very aware of where we have fallen short, just how much we have to entrust what we have done less well to the mercy of God. 07:17.007 --> 07:24.557 [SPEAKER_01]: And so Paul writes today that whether he lives or dies, he wants Christ to be glorified either in his life or death. 07:25.861 --> 07:42.711 [SPEAKER_01]: And as I read some Paul, I was reminded of my dad's prayers as he faced his own mortality and was trying to prepare equally for both scenarios, you know, in the operation he would either die on the operating table or it would be a success and then God was a success. 07:43.552 --> 07:50.356 [SPEAKER_01]: But as my dad looked directly at who the God was that awaited him, this sort of proximity 07:54.558 --> 08:16.815 [SPEAKER_01]: or stock clarity, we had fallen short in his life, and I was struck that in praying for an extension of life, my dad wasn't praying for that because he wanted to go and do any specific or tick off a bucket list, but it was a desire to somehow show God that he could prove himself more worthy of the crown of glory that awaited him. 08:18.207 --> 08:25.514 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we do this especially as Christian, as Catholic parents, we question constantly as we should. 08:26.314 --> 08:29.337 [SPEAKER_01]: Are we living our duty as shepherds of our families? 08:30.558 --> 08:39.607 [SPEAKER_01]: We know we are on perfect, but when we fail to live up to our calling, we can be ruthless judges of ourselves, merciless judges. 08:40.408 --> 08:51.365 [SPEAKER_01]: We can sometimes forget that while God is the God of justice, it is not a justice of equal scales, it is justice tempered with mercy. 08:52.781 --> 08:59.185 [SPEAKER_01]: When we have confessed our sins and received dissolution and undertaken parents, we might still have the memory of our sinfulness. 09:00.045 --> 09:08.731 [SPEAKER_01]: But if we offer given by him, we need to lift our eyes from our past sinfulness and keep our eyes on him on his mercy. 09:09.771 --> 09:14.554 [SPEAKER_01]: And there is a poignant passage from Khalil Gibran that certainly expresses this. 09:15.315 --> 09:15.675 [SPEAKER_01]: And he wrote, 09:17.275 --> 09:25.757 [SPEAKER_01]: Your fear of death is but the trembling of the Shepard when he stands before the King whose hand is to be laid upon him in honor. 09:27.018 --> 09:32.659 [SPEAKER_01]: Is the Shepard not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the King? 09:34.099 --> 09:37.220 [SPEAKER_01]: Yet it is he not more mindful of his trembling. 09:39.095 --> 09:46.557 [SPEAKER_01]: Our gospel reflects this somewhat reckless generosity of God directly, and our sins of unworthiness. 09:47.177 --> 09:56.979 [SPEAKER_01]: And an update to say it isn't right that we should sometimes feel unworthy on some level, because guilt and shame in the right context is good and none of us can earn or deserve salvation. 09:57.639 --> 10:00.020 [SPEAKER_01]: But the issue comes when we compare ourselves to other. 10:02.289 --> 10:10.355 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, this parable will be read today is only in Matthew and my sister in law who has her own business. 10:11.216 --> 10:13.017 [SPEAKER_01]: She really doesn't like this parable. 10:13.358 --> 10:21.244 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the thought of rewarding those who have worked only a few hours, the same amount as those who have worked the whole day is just unthinkable for her. 10:21.604 --> 10:30.551 [SPEAKER_01]: So let me start with the caveat that it would be inappropriate and wrong for business owners to use this parable as the basis for labor relations. 10:31.893 --> 10:41.783 [SPEAKER_01]: The parable presupposes the situation in first century Palestine with a landowner does not have a crew of regular workers, but is dependent on the occasional help from men of the village. 10:43.104 --> 10:50.111 [SPEAKER_01]: So the first group goes out into the fields of sunrise, the next 9 o'clock, the next 12 o'clock, the next 3 o'clock on the last group at about 5pm. 10:51.132 --> 10:56.597 [SPEAKER_01]: And then it's sundown about an hour later, it's six PM, all are gathered together called together to be paid. 10:57.518 --> 11:02.863 [SPEAKER_01]: And with those, you had worked the one hour received the denarius, which is equal to about 20 cents. 11:02.923 --> 11:05.486 [SPEAKER_01]: And what was considered a generous for a full day's work? 11:06.086 --> 11:12.993 [SPEAKER_01]: You can just imagine the others looking at this and trying to calculate it in their head, how many times more than a denarius they would be receiving. 11:14.565 --> 11:17.706 [SPEAKER_01]: and of course they then argue, or complain. 11:18.106 --> 11:23.708 [SPEAKER_01]: But despite their protests the land owner will not change his mind and says he is free to be equally generous with all. 11:24.469 --> 11:27.450 [SPEAKER_01]: He is sovereign over his own lands and money. 11:28.650 --> 11:32.892 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's important to remember the context as well that the laborers who came last were not lazy. 11:33.412 --> 11:43.721 [SPEAKER_01]: They've been waiting the whole day for work and when the land owner asked them why, you know, they hadn't been working, they said no one has hired us. 11:44.842 --> 11:48.645 [SPEAKER_01]: So the idleness or lack of working is the curse of unemployment. 11:48.665 --> 11:49.586 [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't laziness. 11:50.366 --> 11:59.374 [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's softens that a little bit and reminds us that the central actor here is the generous land owner. 11:59.654 --> 12:00.835 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not the disgruntled 12:03.455 --> 12:19.864 [SPEAKER_01]: The land owner operates by the standard of grace, not merit, but the laborers are so bound to legalistic thinking that they cannot conceive of anyone motivated by grace rather than by measuring out rewards according to human standards. 12:20.605 --> 12:27.028 [SPEAKER_01]: I give you X, you give me Y, and the parable wind against everything the scribes and the Pharisees believe. 12:27.709 --> 12:29.910 [SPEAKER_01]: You follow the law you will be best by God. 12:31.670 --> 12:33.331 [SPEAKER_01]: you don't, you get cursed by God. 12:34.151 --> 12:38.513 [SPEAKER_01]: But that sort of tit-for-tat relationship is a transactional relationship. 12:38.673 --> 12:39.854 [SPEAKER_01]: You do for me, I do for you. 12:41.014 --> 12:41.754 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not love. 12:43.195 --> 12:54.440 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it was addressed to Jesus' opponents to teach them why he preached the kingdom not only to the pious, but the lost sheep of Israel as well, the sinners and the text collectors. 12:56.172 --> 13:01.195 [SPEAKER_01]: Whether we are a pious, or we are more sinful, we all receive the grace that we need. 13:02.275 --> 13:05.097 [SPEAKER_01]: All the forgiveness that we need, if we ask for it. 13:05.937 --> 13:13.401 [SPEAKER_01]: Even if our contribution to the kingdom is the least of everybody else's in our community, because of our weakness. 13:15.545 --> 13:18.466 [SPEAKER_01]: His grace is for where we are right now. 13:18.626 --> 13:21.447 [SPEAKER_01]: Not where we want to be or will be in the future. 13:22.408 --> 13:24.349 [SPEAKER_01]: Jesus meets us where we are. 13:25.469 --> 13:28.590 [SPEAKER_01]: Give us the grace and lead us home. 13:30.311 --> 13:30.511 [SPEAKER_01]: Amen.